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NVIDIA Puts Out 290 Linux Driver Series Beta

Phoronix: NVIDIA Puts Out 290 Linux Driver Series Beta

It was just in August that NVIDIA was pushing out driver betas for their Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD 285.xx series, but now that the series is stable, they have moved onto the 290.xx series. On Friday NVIDIA released the 290.03 Linux driver beta...

The cached shaders don't need to be compiled after starting a GL app. After the app is started there's no runtime difference between cached & non-cached shaders, so I wonder how/why would one benchmark cached vs non-cached shaders?

The cached shaders don't need to be compiled after starting a GL app. After the app is started there's no runtime difference between cached & non-cached shaders, so I wonder how/why would one benchmark cached vs non-cached shaders?

I cannot imagine a graphics driver that did not cache such things in memory in the first place, so the advantage of caching shaders on the disk would be to keep them available between runs. If there is an option to disable it, Michael could use thta. Otherwise, he could just wipe the cache.

The cached shaders don't need to be compiled after starting a GL app. After the app is started there's no runtime difference between cached & non-cached shaders, so I wonder how/why would one benchmark cached vs non-cached shaders?

How:
1) Delete shader cache contents
2) Run a single timedemo run in the game being benchmarked (not 3 runs)
3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 for as many runs as you want

Why:
Allows you to see how much of a loading bottleneck the shader compiler is. I have done the same thing in the OpenCL programs that I am working on. Caching compiled OpenCL kernels instead of compiling them each run saves about 0.5 - 0.75 seconds of startup time for me. This could save a second or so on each level load in the game of your choice.